On February 10, 2006 Fox aired the final four episodes Arrested Development. Over the five years since the show was canceled rumors kept popping up about a possible movie, but nothing was ever official. A “boy who cried wolf” mentality was adopted by most fans.
Well my friends, cue “The Final Countdown” and let’s all take a trip back to “The Big Yellow Joint” as a movie has finally been confirmed.
Mitchell Hurwitz, creator of Arrested Development, told attendees of the New Yorker Festival that he was also planning a 10 episode run of the show which would allow the audience to catch up on the characters’ lives. Hurwitz went on to say:
“Where everyone’s been for five years became a big part of the story. So, in working on the screenplay I found that even if I just gave five minutes per character to that backstory, we were halfway through the movie before the characters got together. And that kinda gave birth to this thing we’ve not been pursuing for a while and we’re kinda going public with a little bit. We’re trying to do kind of limited run series into the movie.”
Stars of the show have began tweeting their excitement from the event:
@batemanjason
Jason BatemanIt’s true. We will do 10 episodes and the movie. Probably shoot them all together next summer for a release in early ’13. VERY excited!
15 hours ago via Twitter for iPhone · powered by @socialditto
@MrTonyHale
Tony HaleFun hanging out with the Arrested Development crew today. Even funner hearing more episodes and a movie is on the way! 13 hours ago via Mobile Web · powered by @socialditto
@arnettwill
Will ArnettI’m peeing with @batemanjason at the moment..and we can confirm that we are going to make new AD eps and a movie 15 hours ago via Twitter for iPhone · powered by @socialditto
It seems as though Hurwitz has a plan in place, and he even shared some of his ideas for the 10 episode run at the New Yorker festival:
“We’re basically hoping to do nine or 10 episodes with almost one character per episode, where like the first episode will just be Buster. We’re kinda picturing it like, um, well the latest joke we have is that, you know, it’s Cambridge, Massachusetts and there’s all these scientists in lab coats and they’re waiting for somebody and Buster comes through the door wearing a lab quote and says `let’s begin,’ and they say, `you don’t get to wear the lab coat, we’re experimenting on you. [garbled] And then we go through his life and we meet the people in his life and maybe he goes to see his therapist who he’s getting a good rate on because it’s Tobias and he’s lost his license. We can do cross overs and things like that. But it’s an unusual style of show I think and we get him to a certain point of peril in his life and then maybe we jump over to like Maeby and she’s living with Cornel West … “
The new episodes of Arrested Development are slated to air next Fall on possibly Showtime and Netflix, with the movie coming out sometime in 2013.